CHAPTER II

TELLING HOW, ONCE AGAIN, KATHERINE CALMADY LOOKED ON HER
SON

THE bulletin received at Turin was sufficiently disquieting. Richard
had had a relapse. And when at Bologna, just as the train was starting,
General Ormiston entered the compartment occupied by the two ladies, there
was that in his manner which made Miss St. Quentin lay aside the magazine
she was reading and, rising silently from her place opposite Lady Calmady,
go out on to the narrow passage‐way of the long sleeping‐car. She was very
close to the elder woman in the bonds of a dear and intimate friendship, yet
hardly close enough, so she judged, to intrude her presence if evil‐tidings
were to be told. A man going into battle might look, so she thought, as
Roger Ormiston looked now—very stern and strained. It was more fitting to
leave the brother and sister alone together for a little space.

At the far end of the passage‐way the servants were grouped—Clara, comely of
face and of person, neat notwithstanding the demoralisation of feminine
attire incident to prolonged travel. Winter, the Brockhurst butler,
clean‐shaven, grey‐headed, suggestive of a distinguished Anglican
ecclesiastic in mufti. Miss St. Quentin’s lady’s‐maid, Faulstich by name, a
North‐Country woman, angular of person and of bearing, loyal of heart.
Zimmermann, the colossal German‐Swiss courier, with his square, yellow beard
and hair en brosse.—An air of
discouragement pervaded the party, involving even the polyglot conductor of
the wagon‐lits, a small, quick,
sandy‐complexioned, young fellow of uncertain nationality, with a gold band
round his peaked cap. He respected this family which could afford to take
a
page: 501 private railway‐carriage half across
Europe. He shared their anxieties. And these were evidently great. Clara
wept. The old butler’s mouth twitched, and his slightly pendulous cheeks
quivered. The door at the extreme end of the car was set wide open. Ludovic
Quayle stood upon the little, iron balcony smoking. His feet were planted
far apart, yet his tall figure, swayed and curtseyed queerly as the heavy
carriage bumped and rattled across the points. High walls, overtopped by the
dark spires of cypresses, overhung by radiant wealth of lilac wistaria, and
of roses, red, yellow, and white, reeled away in the keen sunshine to left
and right. Then, clearing the outskirts of the town, the train roared
southward across the fair, Italian landscape beneath the pellucid, blue
vault of the fair, Italian sky. And to Honoria there was something of
heartlessness in all that fair outward prospect. Here, in Italy, the ancient
gods reigned still surely, the gods who are careless of human woe.

“Is there bad news, Winter?” she asked.

“Mr. Bates telegraphs to the General that it would be well her ladyship
should be prepared for the worst.”

“It’ll kill my lady. For certain sure it will kill her! She never could be
expected to stand up against that. And just as she was getting round from
her own illness so nicely too”—

Audibly Clara wept. Her tears so affected the sandy‐complexioned, polyglot
conductor that he retired into his little pantry and made a most unholy
clattering among the plates and knives and forks. Honoria put her hand upon
the sobbing woman’s shoulder and drew her into the comparative privacy of
the adjoining compartment, rendered not a little inaccessible by a
multiplicity of rugs, travelling‐bags, and hand‐luggage.

“Come, sit down, Clara,” she said. “Have your cry out. And then pull yourself
together. Remember Lady Calmady will want just all you can do for her if Sir
Richard—if”—and Honoria was aware somehow of a sharp catch in her throat—“if
he does not live.”

And, meanwhile, Roger Ormiston, now in sober and dignified middle‐age, found
himself called upon to repeat that rather sinister experience of his hot and
rackety youth, and, as he put it bitterly, “act hangman to his own sister.”
For, as he approached her, Katherine, leaning back against the piled‐up
cushions in the corner of the railway carriage, suddenly sat bolt‐upright,
stretching out her hands in swift fear and entreaty, as in the state‐bedroom
at Brockhurst nine‐and‐twenty years ago.

“Oh, Roger, Roger!” she cried, “tell me, what is it?”

“Nothing final as yet, thank God,” he answered. “But it
page: 502 would be cruel to keep the truth from you, Kitty,
and let you buoy yourself up with false hopes.”

“He is worse,” Katherine said.

“Yes, he is worse. He is a good deal weaker. I’m afraid the state of affairs
has become very grave. Evidently they are apprehensive as to what turn the
fever may take in the course of the next twelve hours.”

Katherine bowed herself together as though smitten by sharp pain. Then she
looked at him hurriedly, fresh alarms assaulting her.

“You are not trying to soften the blow to me? You are not keeping anything
back?”

“No, no, no, my dear Kitty. There—see—read it for yourself. I telegraphed
twice, so as to have the latest news. Here’s the last reply.”

Ormiston unfolded the blue paper, crossed by white strips of printed matter,
and laid it upon her lap. And as he did so it struck him, aggravating his
sense of sinister repetition, that she had on the same rings and bracelets
as on that former occasion, and that she wore stone‐grey silk too—a long
travelling sacque, lined and bordered with soft fur. It rustled as she
moved. A coif of black lace covered her upturned hair, framed her sweet
face, and was tied soberly under her chin. And, looking upon her, Ormiston
yearned in spirit over this beautiful woman who had borne such grievous
sorrows, and who, as he feared, had sorrow yet more grievous still to
bear.—“For ten to one the boy won’t pull through—he won’t pull through,” he
said to himself. “Poor, dear fellow, he’s nothing left to fall back upon.
He’s lived too hard.” And then he took himself remorsefully to task, asking
himself whether, among the pleasures and ambitions and successes of his own
career, he had been quite faithful to the dead, and quite watchful enough
over the now dying, Richard Calmady? He reproached himself, for, when Death
stands at the gate, conscience grows very sensitive regarding any lapses,
real or imagined, of duty towards those for whom that dread ambassador
waits.

Twice Katherine read the telegram, weighing each word of it. Then she gave
the blue paper back to her brother.

“I will ask you all to let me be alone for a little while, dear Roger,” she
said. “Tell Honoria, tell Ludovic, tell my good Clara. I must turn my face
to the wall for a time, so that, when I turn it upon you dear people again,
it may not be too unlovely.”

And Ormiston bent his head and kissed her hand, and
page: 503 went out, closing the door behind him; while the
train roared southward, through the afternoon sunshine, southward towards
Chiusi and Rome.

And Katherine Calmady sat quietly amid the noise and violent, on‐rushing
movement, squaring accounts with her own motherhood. That she might never
see Dickie again, she herself dying, was an idea which had grown not
unfamiliar to her during these last sad years. But that she should survive,
only to see Dickie dead, was a new idea, and one which joined hands with
despair, since it constituted a conclusion big with the anguish of failure
to the tragedy of their relation, hers and his. Her whole sense of justice,
of fitness, rebelled under it, rebelled against it. She implored a space,
however brief, of reconciliation and reunion before the supreme farewell was
said. But it had become natural to Katherine’s mind, so unsparingly
self‐trained in humble obedience to the divine ordering, not to stay in the
destructive, but pass on to the constructive stage. She would not indulge
herself with rebellion, but rather fashion her thought without delay to that
which should make for inward peace. And so now, turning her eyes, in
thought, from the present, she went back on the baby‐love, the child‐love
which, notwithstanding the abiding smart of Richard’s deformity, had been so
very exquisite to her. Upon the happier side of all that she had not dared
to dwell during this prolonged period of estrangement. It was too poignant,
too deep‐seated in the springs of her physical being. To dwell on it
enervated and unnerved her. But now, Richard the grown man dying, she gave
herself back to Richard the little child. It solaced her to do so. Then he
had been wholly hers. And he was wholly hers still, in respect of that early
time. The man she had lost, so it seemed, how far through fault of her own
she could not tell. And just now she refused to analyse all that. Upon all
which strengthened endurance, upon gracious memories engendering
thankfulness, could her mind alone profitably be fixed. And so, as the train
roared southward, and the sun declined and the swift dusk spread its mantle
over the face of the classic landscape, Katherine cradled a phantom baby on
her knee, and sat in the oriel‐window of the Chapel‐Room, at Brockhurst,
with the phantom of her boy beside her, while she told him old‐time legends
of war, and of high endeavour, and of gallant adventure, watching the light
dance in his eyes as her words awoke in him emulation of those masters of
noble deeds whose exploits she recounted. And in this she found comfort, and
a chastened calm. So that, when at length General Ormiston—
page: 504 incited thereto by the faithful Clara, who
protested that her ladyship must and should dine—returned to her, he found
her storm‐tossed no longer, but tranquil in expression and solicitous for
the comfort of others. She had conquered nature by grace,—conquered, in that
she had compelled herself to unqualified submission. If this cup might not
pass from her, still would she praise Almighty God and bless His Holy Name,
asking not that her own, but His will, be done.

It followed that the evening, spent in that strangely noisy, oscillating,
onward‐rushing dwelling‐place of a railway‐carriage, was not without a
certain subdued brightness of intercourse and conversation. Katherine was
neither preoccupied nor distrait, nor unamused even by the small accidents
and absurdities of travel. Later, while preparations were being made by the
servants for the coming night, she went out, with the two gentlemen and
Honoria St. Quentin, on to the iron platform at the rear of the swaying car,
and stood there under the stars. The mystery of these last, and of the dimly
discerned and sleeping land, offered penetrating contrast to the
sleeplessness of the hurrying train with its long, sinuous line of lighted
windows, and to the sleeplessness of her own heart. The fret of human life
is but as a little island in the great ocean of eternal peace—so she told
herself—and then bade that sleepless heart of hers both still its passionate
beating and take courage. And when, at length, she was alone, and lay down
in her narrow berth, peace and thankfulness remained with Katherine. The
care and affection of brother, friends, and servants, were very grateful to
her, so that she composed herself to rest whether slumber was granted her or
not. The event was in the hands of God—that surely was enough.

And in the dawn, reaching Rome, the news was so far better that it was not
worse. Richard lived. And when, some seven hours later, the train steamed
into Naples station, and Bates, the house‐steward—the marks of haste and
keen anxiety upon him—pushed his way up to the carriage door, he could
report there was this amount of hope even yet, that Richard still lived,
though his strength was as that of an infant and whether it would wax or
wane wholly none as yet could say.

“Then we are in time, Bates?” Lady Calmady had asked, desiring further
assurance.

“I hope so, my lady. But I would advise your coming as quickly as
possible.”

“Is he conscious?”

page: 505

“He knew Captain Vanstone this morning, my lady, just before I left.”

The man‐servant shouldered the crowd aside unceremoniously, so as to force a
passage for Lady Calmady.

“Her ladyship should go up to the villa at once, sir,” he said to General
Ormiston. “I had better accompany her. I will leave Andrews to make all
arrangements here. The carriage is waiting.”

Then, Honoria beside her, Katherine was aware of the hot glare and hard
shadow, the grind and clatter, the violent colour, the strident vivacity of
the Neapolitan streets, as with voice and whip, Garçia sprung the handsome,
long‐tailed, black horses up the steep ascent. This, followed by the
impression of a cool, spacious, and lofty interior, of mild, diffused light,
of pale, marble floors and stairways, of rich hangings and distinguished
objects of art, of the soft, green gloom of ilex and myrtle, the languid
drip of fountains. And this last served to mark, as with raised finger, the
hush—bland, yet very imperative—which held all the place. After the
ceaseless jar and tumult of that many‐days’ journey, here, up at the villa,
it seemed as though urgency were absurd, hot haste of affection a little
vulgar, a little contemptible, all was so composed, so very urbane.

And that urbanity so bland, so, in a way, supercilious, affected Honoria St.
Quentin unpleasantly. She was taken with unreasoning dislike of the place,
finding something malign, trenching on cruelty even, in its exalted
serenity, its unchanging, inaccessible, masklike smile. Very certainly the
ancient gods held court here yet, the gods who are careless of human tears,
heedless of human woe! And she looked anxiously at Lady Calmady, penetrated
by fear that the latter was about to be exposed to some insidious danger, to
come into conflict with influences antagonistic and subtly evil. Wicked
deeds had been committed in this fair place, wicked designs nourished and
brought to fruition here. She was convinced of that. Was convinced further
that those designs had connection with and had been directed against Lady
Calmady. The thought of Helen de Vallorbes, exquisite and vicious,—as she
now reluctantly admitted her to be—was very present to her. As far as she
knew, it was quite a number of years since Helen had set foot in the villa.
Yet it spoke of her, spoke of the more dangerous aspects of her
nature.—Honoria sighed over her friend. Helen had gone, latterly, very much
to the bad, she feared. And as all this passed rapidly through her mind it
provoked all her knight‐
page: 506 errantry, raising
a strongly protective spirit in her. She questioned just how much active
care she might take of Lady Calmady without indiscretion of
over‐forwardness.

But even while she thus debated, opportunity of action was lost. Quietly, a
great simplicity and singleness of purpose in her demeanour, without word
spoken, without looking back, Katherine followed the house‐steward across
the cool, spacious hall, through a doorway and out of sight.

And that singleness of purpose, so discernible in her outward demeanour,
possessed Katherine’s being throughout. She was as one who walks in sleep,
pushed by blind impulse. She was not conscious of herself, not conscious of
joy or fear, or any emotion. She moved forward dumbly, and without volition,
towards the event. Her senses were confused by this transition to stillness
from noise, by the immobility of all surrounding objects after the reeling
landscape on either hand the swaying train, by the bland and tempered light
after the harsh contrasts of glare and darkness so constantly offered to her
vision of late. She was dazed and faint, moreover, so that her knees
trembled. Her sensibility, her powers of realisation and of sympathy, were
for the time being atrophied.

The house‐steward ushered her into a large, square room. The low,
darkly‐painted, vaulted ceiling of it produced a cavernous effect. An
orderly disorder prevailed, and a somewhat mournful dimness of closed,
green‐slatted shutters and half‐drawn curtains. The furniture, costly in
fact, but dwarfed, in some cases actually legless, was ranged against the
squat, carven bookcases that lined the walls leaving the middle of the room
vacant, save for a low, narrow camp‐bed. The bed stood at right angles to
the door by which Katherine entered, the head of it towards the shuttered,
heavily‐draped windows, the foot towards the inside wall of the room. At the
bedside a man knelt on one knee; and his appearance aroused, in a degree,
Katherine’s dormant powers of observation. He had a short, crisp, black
beard and crisp, black hair. He was alert and energetic of face and figure,
a man of dare‐devil, humorous, yet kindly eyes. He wore a blue serge suit
with brass buttons to it. He was in his stocking‐feet. The wristbands and
turn‐down collar of his white shirt were immaculate. Katherine, lost,
trembling, the support of the habitual taken from her, a stranger in a
strange land, liked the man. He appeared so admirable an example of physical
health. He inspired her with confidence, his presence seeming to carry with
it assurance of that which is wholesome, normal, and sane. He glanced at her
sharply,
page: 507 not without hint of
criticism, and of command. Authoritatively he signed to her to remain
silent, to stand at the head of the bed, and well clear of it, out of sight.
Katherine did not resent this. She obeyed.

And standing thus, rallying her will to conscious effort, she looked
steadily, for the first time, at the bed and that which lay upon it. And so
doing she could hardly save herself from falling, since she saw there
precisely that which the shape of the room and the disarray of it, along
with vacant space and the low camp‐bed in the centre of that space, had
foretold—notwithstanding her dumbness of feeling, deadness of sympathy—she
most assuredly must see.—All these last four‐and‐twenty hours she had
solaced herself with the phantom society of Dickie the baby‐child, of Dickie
the eager boy, curious of many things. But here was one different from both
these. Different, too, from the young man, tremendous in arrogance, and in
revolt against the indignity put on him by fate, from whom she had parted in
such anguish of spirit nearly five years back. For, in good truth, she saw
now, not Richard Calmady her son, her anxious charge, whose debtor—in that
she had brought him into life disabled—she held herself eternally to be; but
Richard Calmady her husband, the desire of her eyes, the glory of her
youth—saw him, worn by suffering, disfigured by unsightly growth of beard,
pallid, racked by mortal weakness, the sheet expressing the broad curve of
his chest, the sheet and light blanket disclosing the fact of that hideous
maiming he had sustained—saw him now, as on the night he died.

Captain Vanstone, meanwhile, reassured as to the newcomer’s discretion and
docility, applied his mind to his patient.

“See here, sir,” he said, banteringly yet tenderly, “we were just getting
along first‐rate with these uncommonly mixed liquors. You mustn’t cry off
again, Sir Richard.”

He slipped his arm under the pillows, dexterously raising the young man’s
head, and held the cup to his lips.

The bold and kindly eyes had a certain magnetic efficacy of compulsion in
them. The sick man drank, swallowed with
page: 508
difficulty, yet drank again. Then he lay back, for a while, his eyes closed,
resting. And Katherine stood at the head of the bed, out of sight, waiting
till her time should come. She folded her hands high upon her bosom. Her
thought remained inarticulate, yet she began to understand that which she
had striven so sternly to uproot, that which she had supposed she had
extirpated, still remained with her. Once more, with a terror of joyful
amazement, she began to scale the height and sound the depth of human
love.

Presently the voice—whether that of husband or of son she did not stay to
discriminate—it gripped her very vitals—reached her from the bed. She
fancied it rang a little stronger.

“It is contemptibly futile, and therefore conspicuously in keeping with the
rest, to have taken all this trouble about dying only, in the end, to sneak
back.”

“Oh! well, sir, after all you’re not so very far on the return voyage yet,”
Vanstone put in consolingly.

Richard opened his eyes. Katherine’s vision was blurred. She could not see
very clearly, but she fancied he smiled.

“Yes, with luck, I may still give you all the slip,” he said.

“Now, a little more, sir, please. Yes, you can if you try.”

“But I tell you I don’t care about this business of sneaking back. I don’t
want to live.”

“Very likely not. But I’m very much mistaken if you want to die like a cat,
in a cupboard, here ashore. Mend enough to get away on board the yacht to
sea. There’ll be time enough then to argue the question out, sir. Half a
mile of blue water under your feet sends up the value of life most
considerably.”

As he spoke the sailor looked at Katherine Calmady. His glance enjoined
caution, yet conveyed encouragement.

“Here, take down the rest of it, Sir Richard,” he said persuasively. “Then I
swear I won’t plague you any more for a good hour.”

Again he raised the sick man dexterously, and as he did so Katherine observed
that a purple scar, as of a but newly healed wound, ran right across
Dickie’s cheek from below the left eye to the turn of the lower jaw. And the
sight of it moved her strangely, loosening the last of that binding as of
frost. A swift madness of anger against whoso had inflicted that ugly hurt
arose in Katherine; while her studied resignation, her strained passivity of
mental attitude, went down before a passion of violent and primitive
emotion. The spirit of battle became dominant in her, along with an immense
necessity of loving and of being loved. Tender phantoms of past joy ceased
to solace. The actual, the
page: 509 concrete, the
immediate, compelled her with a certain splendour of demand. Katherine
appeared to grow taller, more regal of presence. The noble energy of youth
and its limitless generosity returned to her. Instinctively she unfastened
her pelisse at the throat, took the lace coif from her head, letting it fall
to the ground, and moved nearer.

Richard pushed the cup away from his lips.

“There’s someone in the room, Vanstone!” he said, his voice harsh with anger.
“’Some woman—I heard her dress. I told you all—whatever happened—I would
have no woman here.”

But Katherine, undismayed, came straight on to the bedside. She loved. She
would not be gainsaid. With the whole force of her nature she refused denial
of that love.—For a brief space Richard looked at her, his face ghastly and
rigid as that of a corpse. Then he raised himself in the bed, stretching out
both arms, with a hoarse cry that tore at his throat and shuddered through
all his frame. And, as he would have fallen forward, exhausted by the effort
to reach her and the lovely shelter of her, Katherine caught and, kneeling,
held him, his poor hands clutching impotently at her shoulders, his head
sinking upon her breast. While, in that embrace, not only all the motherhood
in her leapt up to claim the sonship in him, but all the womanhood in her
leapt up to claim the manhood in him, thereby making the broken circle of
her being once more wholly perfect and complete, so that carrying the whole
dear burden of his fever‐wasted body in her encircling arms and upon her
breast, even as she had carried, long since, that dear fruit of love, the
unborn babe, within her womb, Katherine was taken with a very ecstasy and
rapture of content.

“My beloved is mine—is mine!” she cried,—“and I am his.”

Captain Vanstone was on his feet and half way across the room.

“Man alive, but it hurts like merry hell!” he said, as he softly closed the
door.